


I guess I'll never know where the boys of summer have gone

by kryptidkat



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album)
Genre: Drabble, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, Friendship, Gen, KOBRA SAYS A NAUGHTY WORD SORRY, Oneshot, platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23254627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kryptidkat/pseuds/kryptidkat
Summary: Kobra and Cherri steal a moment together after the clap inAftermath.
Relationships: Agent Cherri Cola & Kobra Kid (Danger Days)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 47





	I guess I'll never know where the boys of summer have gone

**Author's Note:**

> A supplemental scene to Aftermath. (The extra-soft version of this reunion, by popular demand.) 
> 
> On a related note, I’ve always been rather confused about the reason why Cherri wasn’t on the Sing mission (I mean, it makes sense from the MV standpoint simply because he didn’t really exist in that version, but it was never really satisfactorily explained in in the comics; those were kind of just like ‘Hm, guess he was a coward, next question’ which seems kind of OOC even for peace-loving comics!Cherri). So here’s an attempt at an explanation that’s somewhat canon-compliant in that he still wasn’t there, but paints him in perhaps a more consistent and favorable light, idk.

“Need a lift, motorbaby?” Cherri said, cocking his head at Kobra. He revved his bike invitingly.

Kobra ducked his head to hide a smile and took an automatic step toward him.

Then he faltered and glanced back at Poison, conflicted.

“Sacred Witch, Kobra, I’m not going to fucking disappear if you’re not looking at me,” Poison snapped. Probably harsher than he meant to, still buzzing with nerves from the firefight. “Go. We’re right behind you.”

Kobra gave him a dirty look, but he flipped his visor down and swung onto the motorcycle behind Cherri.

“Saps,” Ghoul said, watching them drive off.

“Absolutely disgusting saps,” Poison agreed, reaching for Ghoul’s cig to steal a drag.

“Hey. Pack it up,” said Jet wearily. He waved them both toward the ‘Am again. “We should be getting back, too.”

~~~

With their head start, they made it back to the diner well before the others. Cherri pulled up around the back and into the bike shed. 

Kobra was barely off the back of the motorcycle and was taking off his helmet when Cherri tackled him, wrapping his arms tight around his neck and pulling him down to him.

Kobra, stiff from surprise at first, quickly buried himself in Cherri’s arms—whether more as a comfort to himself or for Cherri’s sake, neither was sure.

Gods, he was here, he was really here. Cherri never thought he was going to see Kobra again. Cherri impulsively grabbed the sides of Kobra’s head and began planting frantic kisses all over his grimy face—forehead, nose, cheeks.

Kobra blinked at this. “Cher,” he said, sounding more bewildered and worried than annoyed, and was making no attempt to pull away, but Cherri forced himself to stop before Kobra could get actually pissed and try to push him off. He threw his arms back around Kobra’s neck.

“Fuck you, you asshole,” Cherri found himself saying. “I should have done this when you left, dammit...”

This awkward embrace wasn’t good enough, though, so he wrestled his arms free and yanked Kobra back into him again, into possibly the most bone-crushing hug of Kobra’s life, wrapping his arms around Kobra’s ribcage and fisting his hands in the back of Kobra’s jacket, trying to clutch him even closer.

A high, pained sound escaped Kobra involuntarily, and Cherri tried to release him, suddenly remembering the injury under Kobra’s shirt, the point-blank laser blast he’d gotten to the chest. “Shit, sorry, sorry, I’m hurting you—"

“Don’t care.” Kobra had latched onto him and refused to let him go, ducking his head into Cherri’s shoulder like he was trying to bury himself in Cherri’s embrace completely. Because letting go would hurt more than this did.

Cherri couldn’t even remember the last time they’d hugged. It wasn’t the last time he’d seen Kobra, though it ought to have been. Maybe it’d been when they were bumming it at the abandoned skatepark a few months ago, and Kobra had finally nailed the cool jump he’d been struggling to get right for an hour and had triumphantly thrown himself at Cherri, hollering _Did you see that? Did you see that, dude? Bitches WISH._

“Shouldn’t have let you leave without me,” Cherri bit out fiercely under his breath, nuzzling into Kobra’s dusty hair.

“You had to,” Kobra said muffled into Cherri’s jacket. Always the sensible one even now, on the verge of cracking, himself.

“No I didn’t!” Cherri knew he was being irrational, but he couldn’t help it.

“You were our wild card. If Doc and Chimp didn’t make it out we needed you safe, for her. If anything had gone wrong—”

“Something did go fucking wrong, and I wasn’t there!” Cherri was hurtling toward hysteria, and he was grabbing onto Kobra like he was the only thing that could keep him from going off the edge.

Kobra had to wrestle him back, pulling away enough to meet his eyes.

“Cher,” Kobra said. “Nothing went wrong. You know that.” _Right?_

Cherri gulped in a big shuddering breath, a desperate attempt to compose himself, and nodded.

He himself had always been more of a guardian angel to the Girl than crew or family, and in the rare circumstance where things got hot enough that the Four, the usual suspects, were being run into the ground, he had always been the one on call to whisk her away until the onslaught subsided. They had needed him here, in case they needed him to do it again. Doc and Chimp were the first line of defense, but if they took a one-way trip to Costa Rica too…

That had been the only uncertainty.

The rest of the plan, they’d all known. There was only one way this mission could end. Even before they’d left without their masks, Cherri had known.

This, _this_ was what was beyond the Radiation Belt.

The worst had happened, and incredibly, after — survival. Now they had to come to terms with the ordinary that followed, eerily anticlimactic and senseless after the high-stakes, single-minded goal that’d had them running headlong toward their deaths.

Their return was a twist of events that had sent them all reeling, threatened to upend everything they thought they knew about purpose, choice, fate. An unexplained grace none of them knew how to stomach.

Forehead to forehead, Kobra cradled the back of Cherri’s neck in his hand. Thumbed gently at the nape of Cherri’s hair. An uncharacteristically tender gesture, for him. “Anyhow. She’s back. We’re all back.”

Cherri closed his eyes. “It was dark out, wasn’t it,” he said. “When you got there. By the time it was over.”

“Yeah,” Kobra said. Not sure what he was getting at.

Cherri pressed his lips together and nodded.

He’d heard it, somehow. So loud he was sure the whole desert had heard, before he realized it was all in his head.

The abrupt silence, quieter than mere absence of noise.

A scream in the voice he knew best of all but unlike any scream he’d heard before, ripped from the screamer’s throat like he was the one dying.

The ringing slam of a door, final as the fell of an executioner’s axe.

The laughter, defiant as only a fated man could laugh.

The choked rasp of a dying savior’s final word: _Run._

Then the shockwave that followed, rippling through the zones, echoing endlessly between dimensions. An unspoken cry, caught between commandment and plea.

It sounded almost like _Remember me._

And only rain, after that. 

The waiting had gotten to Cherri. That’s all it had been. By then he’d been up for well over 48 hours, however long it’d been since he’d gotten the news of the Girl’s capture, of their darkest fear come true. It had been mere sleep deprivation, something, an overactive imagination fueled by the sickening quiet and emptiness all around him. Nothing more, Cherri was certain. Even after seeing the footage.

He decided not to tell Kobra about final shot of the tape, the deepfake of Poison in a bodybag. Reduced to an empty shell, deathly pale with once-vivid hair cropped short—the storied leader of the desert rebellion stripped not only of life but of color.

He opened his eyes. “How bad was it, really?”

“Bad,” said Kobra.

His gaze flickered past Cherri like he was seeing it all over again, and Cherri suddenly feared Kobra was going to shut down and go somewhere he couldn’t reach him at all, but Cherri couldn’t unsay it.

And then Kobra was sobbing helplessly into Cherri’s neck. “Pa—Party—he—”

“Oh, gods. Hey. Hey, Kobra. I know.” Cherri took him gently as he crumpled, and brought him safely down, and wrapped him up tight.

“That bastard—I—I couldn’t stop him—”

Kobra had been holding this in for a week. For a week he’d had to bury this, help keep everyone else from falling apart. And there wasn’t anything Cherri could _do_ for him now, really, but he could hold him, so he did. “I know, I know. I saw.”

“You — you didn’t see —” Kobra choked out, and couldn’t finish.

Because he was the only one who had seen that the life left Poison’s eyes long, long moments before Korse put that gun to his throat.

A few paces across the room, Kobra might as well have been an ocean away.

The lifeblood of the rebellion. His brother, his hero. 

He had stopped fighting.

Kobra still didn’t know why. He probably never would.

And remembering that empty stare alone was enough nightmare fuel for a lifetime.

~~~

Afterwards, when he found himself huddled against Cherri on the filthy floor with Cherri stroking his hair, Kobra said thickly: “Guess that was the best way.”

“What?” Cherri glanced down at him. “You’re gonna have to rewind a bit for me, Kobrakid.”

“You know.” Kobra sniffed and scrubbed his sleeve cuff over his eyes. “If it was the other way around it would be worse. If he had to watch me—I don’t…I wouldn’t want him to see me like that. The way he…”

“Nevermind that now,” Cherri interrupted him quick, before Kobra could get lost in that memory again. He had to steady him, get him back on his feet. The Girl had surely heard them drive up and could come running out of the diner any second now looking for them, wondering where the others were, and she shouldn’t see Kobra like this. Kobra wouldn’t want her to. He cuffed Kobra’s arm gently. “I’m still mad at you, you know. You should have radioed when you got out of there. Jerk.”

Kobra frowned. “Cherri, I couldn’t,” he said reasonably. “We didn’t take transmitters. We weren’t going to need ‘em.”

The blunt, matter-of-fact way he said it made Cherri hug him all over again. “Oh. Right. Gods, this is weird.” He pulled back enough to search his face. “How...how does it feel? being here?”

“Weird,” Kobra repeated with a hint of a sheepish smile. “Like...being respawned in fucking Mario Cart or something.” He let out a wet, aborted laugh, knowing it was a ridiculous thing to say, a ridiculous situation to be in.

It was a joke of course; the dracs’ weapons had turned out to only be stunners, after all.

Didn’t mean it still hadn’t been fucking awful.

Kobra inhaled shakily. “When we left last week, I thought…”

“Yeah.” Cherri rested his chin on Kobra’s shoulder. “Me too.”

_Kobra couldn’t remember how often they’d crowded around in high spirits to plot a raid, arguing and laughing and shuffling salt shakers and napkin holders around as placemarkers on the makeshift zone map Party had sketched onto the tabletop._

_But this time it had taken on an entirely different tone. Everyone was there – Doc, Cherri, Pony, Chimp. All of them tight-lipped and grim._

_Once everything had been decided and the group had dispersed for last minute preparations, Kobra was doing his gear and Cherri, who had absolutely nothing to do, came and sat down beside him, so close he was pressed up against his side. It didn’t take Kobra long to finish his routine._

_“Kobrakid,” Cherri said._

_“’S okay, Cher,” said Kobra. They were past talking, now._

_So Cherri just sat with him. They sat until Poison came in and gave Kobra a nod._

_Kobra slipped his gun into its place, and Cherri made no move to hug him. That would be too much like goodbye. The closest thing he got to a hug was Kobra’s fingers brushing the back of his hand briefly as he stood and followed his brother out. He didn’t look back, and Cherri didn’t expect it. That would have been too much like goodbye, too._

And Kobra had left his helmet on its shelf.

Kobra glanced at it now, tossed on the floor a few feet away. Just this morning when they’d picked up the SOS from those zonepups over the waves, he’d automatically snatched it from its place, like he’d always meant to come back for it, and the rest of the crew had done the same with theirs. Kobra been too lost in the rush until now to realize the significance of it.

"Oh well. Keep runnin’," said Kobra.

"Keep runnin’," Cherri replied, automatic.

They weren't though, not now. Far from it.

And yet, simply being alive and breathing was its own kind of running, wasn’t it.

“In the footage,” Kobra said suddenly. “Were you able to see? Did that sonofabitch…?”

Cherri shook his head.

“Dammit. Hoped I’d killed the cunt,” said Kobra. At least one good thing would have come of this shitshow, then.

He’d often wondered if the years-long rivalry his crew shared with Korse had just been an elaborate cat-and-mouse exercise to the head exterminator, some kind of sick game he liked to play.

He’d never been certain Korse hadn’t just been fucking with them, letting them get away only to box them in somewhere else. Learning them, narrow escape after narrow escape. Teasing out all the moves in their playbook before making his final pounce.

“My aim all went to shit,” Kobra went on. “I should’ve—” His voice went wobbly again.

“Hey. Shh. Not your fault,” Cherri said, squeezing the arm wrapped around Kobra’s shoulders reassuringly. He never imagined he’d be sitting here in a dirty shed comforting a wrecked teenage boy — known by most as the notoriously stoic Kobra Kid, and presumed dead until this morning — for failing to kill another man in cold blood. What a strange world this was. With his other hand he thumbed away some of the tearstreaked dirt from Kobra’s cheek.

“What did _you_ do,” said Kobra, twisting around in Cherri’s embrace to settle in closer and tuck his head under Cherri’s chin the way he liked, the way he felt safest. “Y’know. After.”

Cherri hadn’t been able to do much of anything, really.

It already felt like years ago that he’d been stationed at _his_ rendezvous point, waiting for a message that never came. Doc or Chimp were supposed to radio him, but Cherri figured the storm had likely interfered with the signal, and after that they’d probably had to maintain radio silence lest any sinister ears were monitoring the waves.

Then he had seen the footage. The original hacker, whoever they were, had apparently broadcast it to every one of Bl/Ind’s digital billboards in the zones that were still functional. One of them was visible from Cherri’s hideout, across the highway. When it flickered to life unbidden, familiar faces plastered several yards wide in the black and weeping sky, everything stopped feeling real.

“It hadn’t hit yet,” Cherri admitted. “By the time you showed up this morning, even. Once I saw the broadcast I was on autopilot. Ended up back here and couldn’t leave.” He hadn’t intended to come to the diner. He didn’t think he’d driven long enough to reach it. “I knew I should have taken your things to the mailbox, or something, but It was like I was pretending to myself that you all were coming back. That everything was the same.”

But it wasn’t. The zones…he had never heard them so quiet.

“The day the music died,” Cherri mused. He’d set up his radio stuff here to scan the waves for any news of the Girl’s fate, and had found himself at the mic, poetry spilling out of him he couldn’t remember now. A eulogy.

He’d gone back to scanning the waves after that, but the strangest thing happened. There was no chatter, no songs. Stations were going dead, one by one, until there was nothing across the dial but static.

The whole desert was in mourning.

“I said something,” said Cherri. “It was probably shit. I don’t remember, it was all a blur. There wasn’t anything after that for days. On any channel.”

“Oh,” Kobra said. “We thought the bunker radio was broken. Couldn’t pick up anything ‘til this morning.”

“Someone had to break the static,” Cherri said. The Four wouldn’t have wanted silence, not forever. “I had to do _something,_ Kobra, or I’d….” He abandoned that train of thought. “Guess I was trying to send you a message, somehow. Stupid, huh.”

_To all the ghosted souls out there, I hope you find your way home…_

“Nah,” Kobra said. He found Cherri’s hand and slotted their fingers together idly.

Cherri leaned his head back against the shed wall. “Now what?” he said.

“I dunno,” said Kobra. “Didn’t think I’d get this far.” He let out a huff. “After all that time not giving a shit about dying, hell, even wanting to, and I was finally starting to get to the other side of it when they took her and…” He sucked in a pained breath and went on, “And I’d do it again, just the same, but having to give it up just when it was starting to mean something, only to get it all handed back to you like it was nothing after all? I dunno what to think.”

It was probably the most coherent thing Cherri had ever heard Kobra say about something so serious; Kobra wasn’t a words person, but he’d clearly had too much time to think about this in that bunker.

“Whatever happens, ‘s not going to be the same, anymore. Is it,” Kobra said.

“I don’t see how it could be,” said Cherri.

Kobra shifted restlessly. “It wasn’t right. Any of it. We were way too lucky.”

“There’s explanations other than luck for this kind of thing, Kobrakid.”

Kobra just _hmm_ ed skeptically.

“Oh Destroya.” Cherri sat up a little. “Everyone’s gonna lose their shit when this hits the waves. If Doc didn’t already beat me to it, dammit. He always gets the scoop on me. I should’ve called dibs.”

“Don’t!” Kobra said, alarmed. “Don’t. The Girl’s safe. For now.”

Right. Of course. Cherri subsided. He’d gotten excited there, but Kobra was right. Any course of action beyond lying low would be incredibly dangerous.

“Just. Just give it a fuckin’ minute,” said Kobra. “The guys. They…I dunno. They need a minute too.”

Cherri charitably didn’t point out that Kobra probably needed a minute at least as much as any of the others.

“Betcha can get up to a lot of mischief, being dead,” he said instead.

Kobra brightened at that. “Like what?”

“Scare the shit out of people. Steal Ghoul’s camera and take selfies at your shrines. Or, ooh, how about a ghost biker, there’s this thing we could do with glow-in-the-dark pa—"

“Wait, hold up, selfies at the where now?”

Cherri faltered. “The…the shrines, dude. You haven’t seen any?”

“Seen any _what?”_

“Just from here to Tommy’s there’s already, like, three of them. I’m surprised there aren’t any here, yet.”

“Mm. Diner’s elusive that way,” Kobra said offhandedly, but his forehead was still wrinkled up about the shrine thing. “Of _us?_ The fuck would anyone go and do that for?”

“Kobra…” Cherri said. “Most people don’t get to see you the way I do, right? If you had any clue how—”

“I mean, we’re famous, sure, I guess,” Kobra kept talking over him, “it’s just, where in the hell would anyone get the idea to—”

“Ah shit,” Cherri said.

Kobra stopped rambling. “What? Cher?”

It was starting to come back to Cherri, some of the things he had said. “Um. I might have mentioned it? In my broadcast?”

Because it wasn’t just Destroya and Phoenix Witch shrines you saw along the roadsides with fresh desert flowers and trinkets strewn around them; there were a few Mike Milligram ones, too. The first killjoy.

The patron saint of killjoys, some called him.

That was where Cherri had gotten the concept. He’d had no idea at the time it was going to be so swiftly taken as gospel by the rest of the zones.

“What did you tell them, Cher?” Kobra said quietly. “Who are we?”

Cherri chewed his lip, suddenly hesitant.

Eulogies weren’t meant for their subjects to hear.

Then again, if Cherri didn’t tell him, Kobra would find out himself soon enough.

“Well, there’s Jet,” he said. “Patron saint of dust angels.” A beautiful colloquialism for desertborns, Cherri’d always thought.

Kobra snorted. “Of alienhunting, maybe. And smelly socks.”

Cherri grinned. “Is that so.”

“You try being holed up with him in a bunker for a week without fresh air. Sorry, go on.”

“And you have Fun Ghoul—patron saint of fistfights and lit fuses.”

“—patron saint of elbow lickers,” Kobra said darkly at the same time.

Cherri blanched. “Ew, seriously?”

“Seriously. Y’know, cos you can’t feel it, so you don’t notice. He thinks it’s hilarious. Jet’s taken to long sleeves exclusively. If you ever see Ghoul grinning at you weird like he’s gotten away with something? He just licked your elbow and he’s waiting for you to realize it.”

“Oh,” Cherri said. More than one instance came to mind. “Ohhhh. Gross.”

Kobra let out a giggle at the face he was making.

Thank God Kobra could still laugh, at least. It was a little forced, but Cherri couldn’t blame him for being desperate to keep his mind off the ordeal they’d just been through.

“What about Poison?” said Cherri. He was curious now.

“Dude, where would I even start.” Kobra started ticking them off. “Patron saint of horrendous crop tops. Getting distracted by your own fucking reflection in windows. Secondhand chewing gum. Tramp stam—”

“Too much information, too much information!” Cherri interrupted quickly through his own laughter. “I’d pinned him as the patron saint of artists and anarchy, but I take it back. Any of those would be way better.”

Kobra nudged him. “What was mine, then.”

Cherri shrugged. “Patron saint of the almost dead. It suited, I thought.”

Kobra sobered at that. He was quiet for a moment.

“Bit dark, Cher,” he said. “Not sure how that would work out if actually I was ghosted.”

It made sense enough to Cherri, what with the countless scrapes and claps Kobra’d barely gotten out of and the dumb shit he did while still managing to escape unscathed. Not to mention other tendencies.

To go willingly for someone else, after all this? That negated none of the odds Kobra had beaten, of the private battles he’d fought and won.

He wasn’t sure how Kobra would take it if he said as much, however, so Cherri just said lightly, “Then what would you pick?”

“Patron saint of sunglasses, snakes, and sick-ass moves,” Kobra grinned, faking a chop at him. “Duh. What would yours be?”

“Me?” Cherri hesitated. “Uh. Patron saint of, of…” He’d never thought about it. That would be presumptuous. He suddenly couldn’t think of anything he had done he wanted to be remembered for. Anything he had done _he_ wanted to remember. “Hell, I don’t know. What would you say?”

“Patron saint of shitty cowboy hats,” Kobra said promptly.

“That was one time!” Cherri wrestled him down to muss his hair. “It wasn’t even mine!”

“Ow! Easy,” Kobra begged with a wince, raising an arm to fend him off. “Uncle, dude, shit.”

Fuck, Cherri had already forgotten. For a moment, everything had been normal again. “Sorry! Sorry,” he said, sitting up. “Come here.”

He tugged Kobra into another hug, careful to be extra gentle.

“We should go in,” Kobra said reluctantly, leaning into him. “Tell the Girl n’ Doc everyone’s shiny and on their way back.”

“Well, they’re here now. Listen,” Cherri said, nodding his head toward the sound of the trans am coming up the road. He tried to pull Kobra upright, but Kobra was dead weight. “Come on, buck up. I had a question about one of these bikes out here, anyway." A question he never thought he'd get the chance to ask; a ridiculously unimportant question, but perhaps one Kobra needed right now to help keep his mind off everything. "We can have another breakdown later, okay?”

“Promise?” said Kobra dryly. Only half-joking, probably.

“Yeah.”

“‘Kay.” Kobra let himself be dragged to the metal jungle of spare parts and dead motorcycles outside.

~~~

After night fell, no one paid Cherri any mind when he wandered over to the radio mic and clicked it on.

Doc had retired for some much-needed rest, and Poison was passed out on the couch, curled protectively around the Girl, who was fast asleep too.

“Perhaps it’s easy to think we’re best off by ourselves. The lone wolf. The true all-American hero. Because losing anyone could never be worth whatever good times we may have, could it?”

Pony and Chimp were still here, snooping through Poison’s record collection in the corner. Ghoul looked dead on his feet, but he was still doggedly sorting weapons and shoving batteries into chargers. Jet and Kobra were in quiet conversation in the kitchen, something about supplies and runs and how they were going to manage keeping their heads down for a while.

“Good and bad can get skewed in our heads until the bad has so much more weight. We’d rather have no memories of someone at all than good ones, because once they’re gone they all turn too bittersweet to bear.”

Only if you knew to look would you notice how drawn Poison’s expression was, even in sleep. How Jet worried at his new eyepatch like it chafed him. How tense Kobra’s shoulders were. How Ghoul kept stealing glances at the sleeping Girl like he wasn’t sure she would still be there when he looked again.

“But they’re worth the end, my friends. No matter what it is or when it comes. And those we think we’ve lost are never as far away as they seem.” Cherri fingered the two sets of dog tags around his neck absently as he said it, but his gaze was resting on Kobra. “So why don’t we stay, stay gentle, just tonight. Wait for the dawning of the light. Young blood will burn and rave at rise of day, but stay. Stay gentle, just tonight…”

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sure you recognized it, but Cherri is adapting Do Not Go Gentle by Dylan Thomas.
> 
> And credit to Ruination Formation for the patron saints slang concept — big thank you to her for the permission to use it! (Though I did change up some of the names a little to meld better with my ‘verse. Her versions are super rad as well!!)
> 
> Leave a comment and let me know what you think? Or come say hello on [tumblr](https://kryptidkat.tumblr.com)!


End file.
